While most of the information below is still applicable, I won't update this anymore.

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NOTE: This is a tribute to esteel.

Background: When I first started playing (at Nexuiz times), I finished the singleplayer campaign and went online out of curiosity. There I was baffled by the speed at which players were moving and how high they jumped. It turned out I had finished the single player campaign without discovering laser jumping, bunny hopping and remote detonation of rockets. When I asked, immediately a nice player showed me around, I found my way to the forums and discovered esteel's thread "basic basics, or what I wish someone had told me half a year ago". It contained all the information I actually wished someone had told me half a year ago.

So with all the talk about an introduction video going on, I decided to update the text written by esteel and other contributors, and to post it here so newbies can find it. If you find errors or wrong assumptions, don't hesitate to point me towards them, as I would like this text to replace the existing outdated "basics.html" file shipped with Xonotic in the docs directory.

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Revision:0.6.0, applicable to: Xonotic autobuild version as of 2012-12-14

Xonotic Basics explained

This text attempts to cover all of the fundamental principles and techniques for playing Xonotic in particular, though it will largely apply to any first person shooter.

Preface

WTF DO I HAVE TO READ ALL THIS TEXT??!ONE
No, you don't. You can of course just go ahead and play Xonotic. Good luck!

But if you're new to Xonotic, or even new to fast paced first person shooters in general, you will most probably wonder about stuff people do on public servers and how they manage to do it, and, above all else, how they manage to do it so fast. This guide intends to provide a systematic introduction to Xonotic, with a view to increasing your effectiveness in-game, straight off the mark. No kidding.

Still not satisfied with reading all this? Well ok, If you're really impatient read at least the sections "Moving effectively" and "Using Weapons effectively", as the text reveals tricks about both movement and weapon usage that you may not find out by yourself within reasonable time.

Getting Comfortable

The most important thing when playing is 'to feel good'. You need to be comfortable with how the game feels, and how it works, in order to play well. This means being able to concentrate on the game play itself, without being disturbed by in-game distractions or by various sorts of handicaps.

Reducing Clutter

Especially when playing against others the first thing you need to ensure is that you can hear and see well. Although music can enhance the feeling of a game by complementing the action, it can also obscure the sounds of other events - such as players shooting at you or picking up items nearby. For this reason, many people turn off music while playing (set music in the settings/audio menu to off). You can also improve your ability to hear in-game events by simply using headphones instead of speakers. Headphones muffle external noises around you, and also make it easier to hear faint noises in the game. Because of this, you can hear others more easily, and thus react better.

Similarly, eye-candy can make the game very appealing to look at, but can also act to obscure in-game events - the flares and smoke caused by rockets, for example, can make spotting your target much more difficult in the heat of battle. Eye-candy also incurs performance hits on slower machines, which can make playing difficult. Bloom might be nice to look at, but it is often just distracting when playing. So again, many players disable some of the visual effects, so as to make the game easier to play in this regard (things to turn off include Bloom, HDR, Gloss, Coronas and all the Realtime stuff in the settings/effects menu). Although it may seem as if removing visual (and audio) effects will make the game less immersive by reducing the mood which the game designers were aiming for, in the long run it will make it much more rewarding and fun to play. Darkness and shadows can create creepiness and realism, but you simply don't notice these things in a fast-paced multi player battle. On the contrary, they make it harder to spot opponents or items and end up being frustrating. Better to play the game in campaign mode with full visual effects to see how pretty it can be, and then, once you're over the initial craving for eye-candy, start tuning the game to be more functional in multi player.

In this regard, one of the first things to adjust is the brightness and contrast (in the settings/video menu), so that shadows are not too impenetrable, and areas of alternating light and dark don't create difficulties in tracking opponents. It's also worthwhile to try increasing you field of view (fov) - the amount you can see to the left and right. By default, Xonotic uses a fov of 90 degrees. Increasing this improves your peripheral vision, but also makes everything seem smaller and thus reduces your ability to aim. Decreasing it has the opposite effect. Most gamers find a nice balance somewhere around fov 100-120. You can find the fov control in the multiplayer/player setup menu.

Competitive players also like to reduce texturing to achieve a more clean look with higher contrasts by changing the picmip level. You can experiment with that by opening up console (see the chapter "Console") and typing gl_picmip_world followed by a value. To get an impression of what this does to the game, set the value to 10. This operation requires a restart of the renderer to take effect, so do "vid_restart" afterwards.

If you don't like the damage effect that looks like some dirt on your screen whenever you get hit, you can disable gore effects and/or adjust the settings in Multiplayer->Player Setup->HUD settings->Damage.

A very useful setting is to use bright player models. You can choose to replace the player models and colors chosen by thy other players with your own player model and/or colors. Now if you yourself choose the Mega Erebus model (which is the only fullbright model and therefore far easier to spot than models lighted dynamically according to the light situation of the spot they currently move in), you can make everyone get displayed with that model and so be extremely visible to you (Multiplayer->Player Setup->Model Settings->Force player models to mine). Note that this works only if you select "Mega Erebus" for yourself. So by making everyone extremely visible to you, you become extremely visible yourself to everyone, even if those didn't enable fullbright models. Which is rather fair.

Controlling Your Character

Another thing which will greatly improve the game experience is to have comfortable movement controls, and to be able to get to the 'right gun' quickly. In terms of movement, there's no need to stick to the game defaults for controlling your character. Some people like to jump with space; some with mouse2. Some like inverted mouse, and some can't use it. Some use WASD for forward, left, back, right; some use ESDF or even 8456. Use whatever you feel good with.

In terms of weapon controls, try to get out of the habit of using the mouse's scroll-wheel to select which weapon to use. This is a very slow and unreliable way of changing weapons, and in a fast-paced deathmatch your ability to correctly and immediately pick the most appropriate gun for the job is crucial. For example, if you hit someone pretty hard with the rocket launcher, and he has taken a lot of damage, you should switch to the shotgun or machine gun to finish him off, rather than worrying about whether you'll be able to hit him again with the slower and more inaccurate rockets. Using the mouse wheel to switch may well take too long, and you also have to keep an eye on the weapons as they scroll by (unless your mouse has very good scroll feedback, and you've memorized the order of weapons, and you know which weapons you currently have, and you can figure out on the fly how many scrolls you need to get to the shotgun!). On the other hand, if you have configured, say, the G key to switch to the shotgun, you can easily switch quickly and reliably, and finish him off in an instant. For this reason, it's extremely helpful to configure weapon-selection keys around the ones you use for moving. If you feel you don't have enough space around the standard movement keys WASD, you can try relocating the movement keys to another area so you can place weapon binds all around your movement keys. It's also obviously handy to use a similar layout in all the games you play. For example, you can have G as the key for 'all shotgun like weapons' in each game. All 'rocket like' weapons can go on R, and all 'sniper guns' on T, and so on - or whatever suits you! This way you do not need to think about which key you need for which gun - just what you want to do. You can change those key bindings in the settings/input menu.

Finally, adjust your mouse sensitivity. Sensitivity controls how much (or fast) your view turns when moving the mouse. You can make it high sensitivity, which means you need to move the mouse only a short distance to turn fast or far; or you can make it low sensitivity, so that you turn slowly and have to move the mouse further. A high sensitivity reduces the need to lift and reposition the mouse, and it will help you when doing lots of turns. A low sensitivity will help you to aim more easily, and also make your aim more steady if you are nervous and have slightly shaky hands. For the most part, the level of sensitivity you choose depends on how you aim. This is a very personal thing and you will have to see what you like - again, select the setting which is most comfortable for you. However, a good rule of thumb when you're learning to play is to configure your sensitivity a little lower than you're comfortable with, and try to get used to it. After a few hours you will probably find that you have acclimatized, and are aiming better than before. Keep reducing the sensitivity below your comfort zone until you are happy with your aim, or until it definitely becomes too low for you. You'd be surprised about the difference this makes. Also consider that you can either use your wrist or your arm to aim - and you'll probably do one or the other more naturally. Using the wrist is more exact, and thus high sensitivity is found more often among wrist aimers; using the arm involves more mouse movements, and so low sensitivity is common to arm aimers. As a rule of thumb your sensitivity should be set so that you can comfortably perform a 180 degree turn with one sweep of your mouse. The sensitivity setting can be found in the settings/input menu.

Playing

Identifying Your Opponent

Depending on the game mode played you either fight for yourself against all others (sometimes there is just one other player to play against) or its your team vs the other team(s). Pay attention to the welcoming screen it will tell you what game mode is being played. You can find an explanation of those at the end of this guide. If its a team match you might have to choose a team or you could be automatically assigned to a team when you join the match. If you have to choose yourself its best to just use the Auto button! It will assign you to the smallest team or if the teams have the same size to the one that has less points. Only use the specific team buttons if you REALLY want to join that team. You can press F5 to bring up the team selection dialog or instead of pressing F5 and clicking on the Auto button you can also press F6, thats a shortcut for the Auto button. If you are unsure about which team you are in look at your gun or at the scoreboard, which by default will be shown when you press TAB. The weapon color and the color beside your name is your team color. Try to only hit the OTHER team(s) .

Hitting Your Opponent

Once you're comfortable with your controls and your mouse, you should already find it easier to hit your opponents. And, if you've bound keys to each of the weapons, you can accurately pick which one to use. But to know which weapon to select, and to get the most out of it, you must understand the advantages and the use of each.

When you use direct-hit (hitscan) weapons like the shotgun, machinegun, campingrifle and the nex, you 'just' have to directly aim with the crosshair and hit fire. Obviously this can be much harder than it sounds, particularly when both you and your opponent are moving. Therefore, you should use geometry to your advantage, to reduce the relative movement between you as much as possible, so that you have as much time as possible to aim. When someone is moving from one side of your view to the other it is harder to aim at him than when is moving towards or away from you. In the latter case he will hardly change his position relative to yours, and this gives you more time to aim at him. In the former, his position is changing a lot, and so you have to react to how he moves very quickly and accurately to ensure a good shot. The same principle applies when your opponent uses a jump pad. He will prescribe a trajectory in the air, and at its highest point he will stop for a moment. It is easier to aim at him at this point than when he is accelerating off the jump-pad.

In addition to using geometry to your advantage, when you're moving relative to your opponent it is sometimes easier to not aim with the mouse, but rather to leave it steady at the right height, and use the strafe buttons to move yourself and thus your cross hair onto him. If you have the advantage of his not seeing you, or being unable to shoot at you, or even if you simply have a health and armor advantage over him, you can even just aim at some point and wait for him to walk into your cross hair. However, always bear in mind that people will generally move unpredictably so as to lessen their chances of being hit - so unless you're sure of where he's going, don't sacrifice your own movement advantage for a hit that might never come.

Using projectile weapons such as the mortar, electro, crylink, hagar or rocket launcher can be both easier and harder than using hitscan weapons. You must still consider the same geometric factors, but you also have to keep in mind that your projectile will take some time to travel the distance between you and your opponent. In that time they will continue moving! So it's absolutely no use to aim directly at them. It will take some experience with each weapon, and with getting used to how people move, but you should eventually develop a good instinct for where your opponent will be at the time when your projectile will land (and where the projectile itself will land), and thus be able to 'lead' him when you aim. If your target moves to the right, aim further to the right and press fire. Just note how off your hit was and try to adjust next time. It takes a few matches to get the hang of this. Also consider that almost all projectiles will explode when they hit something hard, and those explosions will also cause damage to players nearby (splash damage). Now thats the part that makes projectile weapons easier to use. You can use splash damage to your advantage, so that rather than trying to predict the exact spot at which to aim your projectile (which is very difficult), you can aim at the general area of floor or wall where you expect your opponent to be and let the splash damage do its work. Along these lines, you'll find that it's much easier to aim at his feet and use the splash damage from the explosion on the floor than it is to hit him directly.

Also bear in mind that people try to evade projectiles; and it is even comparatively easy to do this at distance. If you fire to their left they will see it coming, and change direction to the right. You can use this to your advantage by boxing them in with explosions - just fire another one to their right. If you correctly place both projectiles, they will be unable to evade the splash damage from one of them. Either they will avoid the first and be hit by the second, or they will backtrack to avoid the second and be hit by the first. Or, even better, they'll not see the first one at all and be hit directly.

Moving Effectively

Fast movement is an essential part of the gameplay, to me this section is one of the most important things to learn when playing Xonotic. You will need to be able to get around the map quickly and efficiently if you are to collect items before your opponent does, if you want to hunt down your opponents, and especially if you need to get out of a dangerous situation. As described in the weapons section, the Laser is useful for jumping and gaining speed - but you can use all explosive weapons for a similar effect. Other weapons, however, will cause (much) more damage to your health, and not all offer the same strong push as the Laser. The rocket launcher will push you farther, but you will also take a lot more damage.

You should also know that you gain extra speed moving forward simply by jumping. When you walk, there is friction from the floor which keeps you at a constant speed. If you jump as you walk, the amount of time you touch the floor is considerably less, and so the friction does not slow you down as much. The longer or rather more often you jump, the faster you go. The most simple way to do this is to run forward and simply keep the jump button pressed. Your character will jump again the moment he lands, without you having to worry about timing hitting the jump key. Just try it out and you will notice you get faster and faster.

Another useful thing to know about movement is that if you are flying/jumping, you can release the forward key and instead press the left or right key, and turn your mouse in the same direction. Doing so will turn or 'bend' your jump in this direction, whereas you'll have troubles controlling a turn with continuously pressing forward. This is a useful trick to get around corners, to become less predictable, and also to avoid having to stop jumping to change direction. After getting used to this you can get around maps very fast and maintain a high speed. Also note that releasing forward and pressing strafe key does NOT slow you down even if you are still moving straight, quite contrary, you will be even gaining speed up to a certain limit while performing the turn that way. When learning this movement, it can be a good idea to switch from forward to strafe key already ahead of the turn you are going to make, as you don't loose speed by that anyway and concentrating on too many things at once may be confusing in the beginning.

When bunny hopping forward, an additionally pressed strafe key will give you even a little bit more acceleration. While the extra speed you gain is not that significant in most game modes, it might give you the little extra bit of an advantage that can turn out crucial for the Race game mode.

However, keep in mind that some things slow you down immediately. Quite obviously, bumping into solid things or walls slows you down or even stops you, and, if you run against a wall with enough speed, may even hurt you. But also moving your mouse abruptly will significantly slow you down while bunny hopping, so be sure to move the mouse as smoothly as possible if you intend to keep your speed. Switching from forward and strafe key to only strafe key results in speed loss, always have only forward key pressed when switching to strafe key and release the forward key a tiny bit before pressing the strafe key. This can take a bit of practice especially when you try to race with forward and strafe key pressed at the same time and suddenly need to turn, but you'll notice you move a lot more fluently and faster once you master it.

Both the speed jumping and the turning require a certain amount of practice, but they are easy to learn - especially compared to the trick jumping found in games like Quake 3 CPMA or Enemy Territory. However, there is another trick in Xonotic that hardly needs any practice at all: the ramp jump. Just walk up a ramp or slope, and jump. That jump will get you higher and further than if you had jumped on flat ground. You can reach some interesting spots by doing this, and ramp jumps can be effectively combined with speed jumping to achieve some remarkable acrobatics which can be very useful for taking shortcuts and thus dominating a map effectively. It takes some time to learn the good spots were these four tricks can be used to the maximum effectiveness - again, experiment yourself, watch others, and ask around in-game or here on the Xonotic forums. Most experienced players will take their time to show possible trickjumps, as those are generally considered a very fun aspect of the game.

Controlling The Map

To put up a good fight you need to survive an attack, so make sure you pick up health and armor lying around the map. This will also ensure that your opponents are deprived of these, so it will be easier for you to frag them. To do this effectively you will have to learn where those items are, and try to get them before someone else does. Armor and health items reappear 30 seconds after they were taken. You can use this to your advantage by timing your pickups - look at the scoreboard to see the current map time, and then use this to predict when items will respawn. This way, you can develop patterns on the map so that you're always around when an item respawns. However, be careful - patterns make you predictable, and your opponent can also use the timer! If you keep grabbing the armor or health, he will use this against you by lying an ambush. Nevertheless, due to the powerful weapons in Xonotic, controlling the mega armors and mega healths or even the 50 armors/healths on a map is one of the key strategies in the duel game mode. When you are stacked properly with health and armor, you're likely to survive even a planned ambush of the opponent, since you only have one opponent to deal with that probably has significantly less health/armor than you.

The health and armor system in Xonotic is different to other games in that it tends toward an equilibrium of 100 health and 100 armor. You can stack health and armor up to 200/200, but it will degenerate toward these values. The more health and armor you have, the faster it will degenerate - but when you pick them up the degeneration stops momentarily. Because of this, you can't just load up on health and armor and head off into battle - you need to constantly replenish to remain strong. On the converse, though, when your health is below 100 it will slowly regenerate (armor will not). The lower it is, the faster it will replenish. This regeneration stops for a few seconds if you are hurt, so just running away after a fight helps staying alive but is usually not enough to restore you to useful battle ready levels again - you have to wait a while to regain your full health, and so picking up health after a fight is still important.

In regard to the previous point of working a map to control items, and also shooting at where your opponent will be, it's important to try to predict where on the map your opponents are even when you can't directly see them. First, try to listen for them; secondly, learn the maps so you know the most useful routes and the most popular areas to which people tend to gravitate. It gives you a marked advantage to be able to say, "I saw or heard someone pick up an armor, so they must be at such-and-such location, and from there he can only go to this place or that place." Just shooting something to the likely places your opponent will be - a rocket or a grenade for example - can often result in either a surprise kill, or in surprise damage which you can then follow up. Don't underestimate how likely a well-aimed educated guess is to hit someone. Maybe he'll walk into it - rockets can be hard to see coming, and grenades bouncing at you around a corner or spammed into a small space can be really hard to avoid. Once you've hurt your opponent you'll hear the tink of your damage, and you will also know for sure were your opponent is and can finish him off. You can pretty much 'lock down' a map by picking up items, and making sure others have a hard time getting around which will also mess with their concentration.

Using Weapons Effectively

Among the items you can pick up are the weapons. Some of them are very unique to Xonotic, and to get the most out of them you need to be familiar with every aspect of how they work - including the rate of fire, the damage per hit, the spread and speed of the payload, and so on.

Almost all weapons in Xonotic have two firing modes, so make sure you know both. You normally (depending on game-mode) start equipped with two weapons: the Laser and the shotgun. You can bind weapons to a key at the settings/input menu or in the console using the command bind <key> "impulse <n>", where n is the number of the weapon. As described above in "Controlling your Character", setting up custom binds for weapons that you are able to reach conveniently is generally a good idea in order to be able to switch fast between weapons and thereby to make use of weapon combos.

The Laser is not often used as a weapon, as it does not do much damage - but it's a useful tool to move around the map, because it has a significant push. The 'explosion' from its projectile will push you and other players around a lot. The trick to using it to move around is to use this push to gain speed or to do huge jumps. For an easy start, take the Laser, look down at the floor, and press fire. It will push you high into the air. If you press jump and fire at the same time, you will get even higher - but it depends on the timing, and, for more advanced jumps, also on the angle you fire at the floor, as well as how fast and in which direction you move. For example if you just run forwards, look down and press fire it will catapult you forward with great speed. Play around with it, and watch others, and you will learn a very useful skill in Xonotic. The secondary fire mode of the Laser switches back to the last used weapon. The Laser does not use up any ammo.

Hookgun

The Grappling Hook is another movement tool. The primary mode attaches itself to all sorts of solid objects and will pull you there to move through the map like spider man. You can get very fast that way or reach spots you would not get to by other means. The secondary firemode drops a small gravity bomb that will affect enemy players and also releases a lot of smoke which will make you harder to see and hit. The gravity bomb uses cell ammo. There is also a mutator that adds a off-hand hook which can be used all the time, uses no ammo but only does the pulling part.

Porto

The Port-O-Launch is the perfection of movement. The grenade it launches creates two portals. On the first impact it creates the entrance portal, on the second impact the exit portal. If you enter the first one you (or others players and also projectiles!!) will be teleported to the second portal. As the first portal will teleport everything it can't be hit but the second portal is quite fragile and, because of the used wormhole technology, will take the other portal along if it lost too much energy. The wormhole is also the reason why the portals energy decays after some time. You can replenish the energy by simply teleporting something through it.

The primary fire of the Shotgun is very similar to shotguns of other games. It shoots several bullets with a high spread, so it does very high damage at close range, but becomes very inaccurate at distance. It is also very useful to knock opponents out after you already hit them hard with a rocket or another projectile, and subsequently closed to a distance because it's hard to miss with the Shotgun at close range. With the secondary fire mode you can fling the shotgun at a nearby opponent, and thereby using the shotgun as Xonotic's so far only melee weapon. The range of the secondary attack is slightly extended beyond what would be logical as a tribute to the fast paced movement, but it still is a challenge to hit someone with the melee attack. If you succeed, the shotgun melee attack deals a great amount of damage, which can make it very rewarding to switch to shotgun in the middle of a fight if your opponent happens to come too close. The Shotgun uses shell ammo which is not shared with any other weapons.

The Machine Gun is also quite self-explanatory. It shoots bullets at a high rate of fire, and can do significant damage. The primary fire mode has a high spread and is thus quite inaccurate - but it fires very fast and deals more damage per second than most other weapons. It is therefore devastating when used at close quarters. The secondary fire mode releases short bursts of bullets that have lower spread, so secondary fire mode is useful at medium range. Like the Shotgun, it is an excellent finishing weapon, but its effective use relies heavily on a good, steady aim. The Machine Gun uses bullet ammo just as the camping rifle.

HLAC

The Heavy Laser Assault Cannon (HLAC) is a similar gun but fires highly accelerated Laser bolts at an insane refire rate. The bolts explode on impact and for some extra damage the secondary mode fires several of them at once. This is only gun that has reduced spread when crouching! Beware of your cell ammo (shared with the Electro, Crylink and (Minsta)Nex), this baby eats it like crazy.

The Electro is a rather underestimated gun. Contrary to its name, it does not deal electricity damage, but rather fires plasma - understanding this will help you to use it well. The primary fire mode shoots a plasma projectile which does quite high damage on impact. It also explodes rather like a rocket or grenade, and is quite comparable in use to the Quake 2 rocket launcher. The secondary fire mode spits out up to three balls in a row of contained plasma that will bounce like grenades, and deal similarly high damage. Those blobs have a short trajectory and so do not get very far - but they're useful for blocking a way, or for spamming around your opponent so that he is hedged in by them. If you use the primary fire mode to hit these contained plasma blobs, they will explode more violently than without, causing a lot of extra damage. This combo is very effective in corridors and small rooms. The Electro uses cell ammo which is shared with the Crylink, HLAC and the (Minsta)Nex.

The Crylink is a very unique weapon. Its primary fire shoots medium fast plasma projectiles with a high spread that bounce twice off any surface. The special feature of Crylink's primary fire mode is that the spread of the particles inverses upon release of the primary fire button, which means that upon release of the primary fire mode all particles traverse a single spot before spreading again (unless they already bounced, then it's hardly predictable where they will move). You can use this knowledge to try to release primary fire mode exactly so that all particles hit your opponent. Since the particles move relatively fast and your opponent probably moves too, this is very difficult to get right, but if you succeed the Crylink manages to do a lot of damage. You might want to practice the timing by shooting primary Crylink against a wall in a certain distance, the impact decals of the particles on the wall will show you if you've managed to concentrate all particles on a single spot. Also keep in mind that the particles deal splash damage at every bounce, so shooting an opponent that has a wall behind him can be very effective. The secondary fire mode shoots five moderately fast projectiles at a very low, steady spread. Secondary fire does not bounce. It deals less damage than primary fire but can be useful on longer ranges as it works almost like electro primary. The explosion of the particles create negative push force, dragging the target towards the explosion. The splash damage area is relatively big. In both primary and secondary fire mode, all particles explode as soon as one of the particles hits an opponent. The Crylink uses cell ammo which is shared with the Electro, HLAC and the (Minsta)Nex.

The Nex is a powerful sniper and flick shot weapon. Its primary fire mode fires a hitscan antimatter lance for significant damage, but requires a very precise aim, and has a relatively long reload time. While holding the Nex, it charges - noticeable both by the ring around the crosshair and the glow of the weapon. If charged full, it glows red and deals even more damage, so you might want to ensure your Nex is always fully charged when you encounter an opponent. Upon fire, it discharges completely and glows blue, but will immediately start to recharge again. Charging the Nex does not consume ammo. The secondary fire mode activates zoom. The Nex uses cell ammo which is shared with the HLAC, Crylink, MinstaNex and the Electro.

Minstanex

The MinstaNex is a sniper's wet dream. Similar to the Nex but MUCH more powerful. One hit, one kill, no kidding! The secondary fire mode is identical to the Laser's primary shot. Whereas this gun is mostly found on servers with the minsta mutator, this gun can actually be placed on any map and spread fear in every game mode, provided the mapper put it in the map. Cell ammo is also used by Nex, Crylink, HLAC and Electro.

Camping Rifle

The Rifle is a kind of mixture of a sniper rifle and a long range shotgun. The primary mode is quite similar to the nex but fires a bullet. The rate of fire is quite moderate. The primary fire mode is wall piercing, meaning that you can hit an enemy through a slim wall. The secondary fire mode shoots four bullets at once with very low spread that do a little less damage than primary fire mode. The spread of the secondary fire mode allows you to finish off distant targets that are already low on health. The Camping Rifle is the only gun that can do headshots which cause extra damage, so aim with care, as this gun can out-perform the nex. Headshots can be done with both fire modes. The Rifle uses the same bullet ammo as the Machine Gun.

The Mortar is a grenade-launcher on steroids. Both firing modes shoot a fast-moving projectile grenade which is influenced by gravity, and thus moves in a parabolic trajectory. The primary fire mode shoots grenades that explode on impact while the secondary fire mode shoots grenades which will bounce off objects, and either explode on contact with an other player, or after exactly 0.5 seconds after their first bounce. Knowledge of the explosion delay of the mortar's secondary fire allows you to time the detonation to a certain extent by adjusting your aim to where the grenade will bounce first. Apart from reaching places you cannot directly see or hit, it also is extremely useful to irritate an opponent since if you aim a certain distance before him he probably won't consider dodging the grenade before realizing that the grenade actually bounces instead of exploding on impact. Also you can use it to bounce a grenade off a wall behind the opponent so that it hits him from behind, making it almost impossible for the opponent to dodge. The grenades' arc makes them harder to aim, but also hard to dodge. Since they deal quite high damage, with an excellent rate of fire, the Mortar is a solid all-round weapon once you've got the hang of aiming it. The Mortar uses rocket ammo which is shared with the Rocket Launcher, T.A.G. Seeker, Mine Layer and the Hagar.

The Hagar can be compared to the plasma gun from Quake3. It has a very high rate of fire, with moderate damage, and some splash damage. The primary fire mode shoots small missiles at high speed and an extraordinary rate of fire, but also with considerate spread. The secondary fire mode loads up to four missiles into the gun as long as you keep secondary fire button pressed, and fires them all at once with high spread upon release. You will not be able to run around the map with a fully loaded Hagar for long, though - after a certain time the gun makes a light beep and immediately thereafter the loaded missiles will be released automatically, so be sure not to aim at a wall directly in front of you when you hear the beep. You can also unload the rockets without firing them by pressing primary fire while holding secondary fire button. The Hagar uses rocket ammo which is shared with the Mortar, T.A.G. Seeker, Mine Layer and the Rocket Launcher.

Mine Layer

The Mine Layer's primary fire mode allows you to place up to three mines that are fired from the gun in an arch similar to the Electro secondary fire. Upon contact with any surface, the mine will stick to it. Upon contact with another player, it will detonate, dealing medium to low damage. When placed, the mine will detonate if hit by fire/splash damage, if an enemy player comes close, after a certain time span or if you manually detonate it with the Mine Layer's secondary fire mode (which will detonate ALL mines you placed). Note that you will prevent the mine from exploding by opponent proximity, if you stand within its explosive radius. Mines provide a useful method to annoy players that try to hunt you down when you're on the run, for example when stealing a flag. The Mine Layer uses rocket ammo which is shared with the Mortar, the Rocket Launcher, T.A.G. Seeker and the Hagar.

T.A.G. Seeker

The T.A.G. Seeker's primary fire mode shoots ordinary rockets that move at medium to fast speed and do moderate damage. With secondary fire mode you shoot a small, fast moving projectile, that does no damage at all. If you hit a player, turret or vehicle with secondary fire mode, it will become "tagged". Missiles you shoot with the Tag Seeker's primary fire mode will now home on to the tagged entity. T.A.G. Seeker uses rocket ammo which is shared with the Mortar, Hagar, Mine Layer and Rocket Launcher.

The Rocket Launcher is a little different from that of other games, in that the rockets move relatively slowly. The primary fire mode shoots a slow-moving, high-damage rocket projectile at a medium rate of fire. As long as you keep the primary fire button pressed, you will be able to guide the rocket to a certain extent by moving your mouse. The secondary fire mode will explode all your flying rockets at once. This means that you don't need to hit your opponent directly - just get the rocket near your opponent, and use the secondary fire to cause splash damage which will badly hurt him. This is especially useful for opponents that are in the air, where you won't be able to use splash damage otherwise. To a certain extent, you can also use the detonation feature for boosting yourself while flying / falling. To do that, shoot a rocket straight downwards and immediately detonate it. The force of the nearby explosion will give you an extra push at the cost of some health, useful if there's no wall nearby to laser yourself off. The Rocket Launcher uses rocket ammo which is shared with the Mortar, T.A.G. Seeker, Mine Layer and the Hagar.

Ball Gun

The Ball Gun is solely used in the game mode Nexball. It's primary fire shoots the ball if you happen to hold it. You'll see a charge-o-meter on your HUD (default: in the upper right corner) going back and forth as long as you keep primary fire mode pressed. Once you release the primary fire mode, you'll fire the ball with the force the charge-o-meter indicates at that very moment. The Ball Gun's secondary fire mode allows you to grab the ball off a player. You need to be within reasonable range, and you will need to hit the ball carrying player with the little energy blob that travels at similar speed as the Electro primary fire. If you succeed, you will receive the ball and the ball carrying player will be pushed in your firing direction. The Ball Gun does not eat up any ammo.

Additional Notes on Weapon Usage

Now that you know all the guns you also have to understand that in Xonotic each projectile can be set off by explosions. So its possible to blow up the rocket an opponent is shooting at you. A good strategy against someone with a Rocket Launcher is to spam him with the Hagar or Crylink. Chances are high you make his own rocket explode shortly after he launched it and hurt him whith his own weapon! Note however, that many competitive servers disable this option. Also note that some objects are affected / pushed by explosion like the keys in Keyhunt or the flags in Capture the Flag.

A special feature in Xonotic is that walls do not block explosions, so you can't use them as cover if you hide directly behind them. Similarly, if you know that someone is on the floor above you, shoot at the ceiling, and with a little luck the explosion might hurt him. This can be changed by a server admin, but the default allows for more fun; and it's also nice to see how good people are at guessing where their opponents are.

Special Powerups

Strength Powerup

The Strength powerup will double the damage you deal for 30 seconds. You will also become semi transparent and receive a blueish glowing aura, which makes you visible and other players will be able see you coming before you can see them due to the light you emit. The strength powerup also increases the push force of explosions, enabling you to catapult other players away with the laser. But beware, you will also receive more push and damage yourself from your own shots. While carrying strength, use laser jumping and especially rocket flying with care. If you die while carrying the Strength powerup, the powerup will deplete.

Shield

The Shield powerup will absorb half of the damage you receive for 30 seconds, making you a very hard to kill target. Because it also absorbs damage your own weapons would deal to yourself, rocket flying and rocket jumping is far less dangerous while carrying the shield powerup. If you die while carrying the Shield powerup, the powerup will deplete.

Jetpack

If you pick up the Jetpack powerup, you will get thrusters on your back that allow you to fly around the map as long as your fuel lasts. The key for activating the Jetpack is shared with the offhand-hook. The Jetpack uses fuel, which is shared with the Fireball.

Fuel Cells

Fuel cells replenish your fuel tank which you need for using the jetpack.

Fuel Regenerator

The fuel regenerator will slowly regenerate your fuel tank if you don't use your jetpack for a while. It does not expire, it regenerates fuel until you are fragged.

Fireball

The primary fire mode of the Fireball charges the gun for a moment and then, after a little delay, releases a big burning ball that will move very slowly and will explode with huge damage and splash radius upon contact. The ball is so hot that you don't even need to hit anyone with it, simply being near when the ball passes will cause reasonable damage. Secondary fire mode releases a small fire mine that bounces about similar to Electro secondary. The fire mine will ignite anyone near, so if hit by a fire mine you will start burning for a little while, receiving continuous damage during that period. The Fireball is a superweapon that is available for 30 seconds and does not consume any kind of ammo. You can drop it, but the 30 seconds countdown continues to run.

Minstanex

In games without the minsta mutator, the Minstanex may appear as a pickup. Like the Fireball, it then is a superweapon that you can use for 30 seconds and which does not consume any ammo. You can drop it, but the 30 seconds countdown continues to run.

The Console

Games generally have a great many settings which can be changed or tweaked to give you the best advantage. A lot of these aren't included in the game menus, which are limited by space and intended to give only a quick and compact view of the most important options. For all the other variables, you have the in-game console. This is like a command line inside the game, even with tab completion! You can enter commands to connect to a server, vote for options on the server, or to change variables like your name or various graphic effects. You can access the console by pressing shift-escape, and you can close it again by pressing escape. Lots of info is available on the official Xonotic forum regarding the effective use of the console, but probably the most important in multiplayer is using it for voting, which will be briefly covered here:

When you are on a server, open the console and type vhelp. This will display a short help regarding voting, and also tell you what can be voted on the server. By default, things you can vote for include the time limit and the map played. By entering vcall endmatch you call a vote to end the current map and to play the next one. Or, as another example, vcall gotomap xoylent will start a vote to switch to the map 'Xoylent'. Note that you won't have to write the full map name, the server will check if there is only one possible completion and, if yes, complete the command accordingly (so vcall gotomap xoy would do the same trick unless there's another map present on the server beginning with xoy). The vote gets printed to every player on the server, who can then accept or reject it. To accept a vote, press F1 (or type in cmd vote yes into console); to reject it, press F2 (or enter cmd vote no into console). If enough players accept the vote you called, the action you voted for will be executed. It does not hurt to tell people to press F1/F2, as some might not know about it.

Game Types

Xonotic supports several different game modes and some smaller changes called mutators. Both are displayed when you connect to a server.

Modes

You vs The Rest

In the following game modes you play versus all the other players that all try to reach the game mode's objective for their own sake.

Deathmatch (dm) is the most simple game mode. It is a free-for-all fragfest with every man for himself. All items are free to grab, and the player with the most frags will win (either by hitting the frag limit, or when the time limit expires).

Arena (arena) mode is similar to deathmatch, but it only puts two players into a map, with the others waiting in a queue. When one of both is fragged the next one in the queue will play against the winner.

In Keepaway (ka) you can score by fragging only if you happen to carry the one little glowing ball placed on the map, or if you frag the ball carrier. Once you pick up the ball, you'll get a sprite "Ball Carrier" attached to you making yourself visible for everybody even through walls.

Last Man Standing (lms) puts all players into a map without any items. Each player has several lives, and starts with 200 health, 200 armor and all weapons when he spawns. Each time you are fragged you lose a life. But careful, just hiding or camping at one spot will deal significant damage to yourself after a short time, so be sure to keep moving around. The winner is the last surviving player.

Race (race) is a game mode for all the quick Xonotic players. The goal is to race through the level as fast as possible. A timer is set off at the startline and stopped at the endline. Checkpoints in between give you an update on your time and compared to the top player. There are three different race modes:

Qualifying mode saves each player's fastest lap time and the player with the fastest time wins. When you die, you respawn in front of the startline. Players can't interact in this mode. They walk through each other and can't shoot at the others.

Race mode is won by the player who makes a certain count of laps first. Players can interact and kill each other. When killed, you respawn in front of the last checkpoint you went through.

Mixed mode has the players first compete in qualifying mode for a certain time, or until they are all ready, then the game switches to race mode. The fastest player in qualifying mode is the first to spawn in race mode and so on.

Race Complete The Stage (cts) is a puristic race mode where you have to complete a one way track from start to finish as fast as possible. There is no qualifying, as all players may start in any order, at any time. Only thing that counts is how fast you manage to get from the start to the finish. Very often Race CTS maps provide challenging parcours that require you to master certain movement skills in order to reach the finish in the first place. Many public Race CTS servers also use different physics settings (XPM) that have higher emphasis on strafe jumping.

Runematch (rune) places five runes into the map in addition to the normal items. A rune gives you a bonus but also a curse - but you only get points for fragging if you carry a rune, so make sure you have one. You also get points for fragging a rune carrier, and for just holding a rune (but fragging is the quicker way to gain points). The player with the most points wins.

Team Based Game Modes

In team based game modes you should, quite obviously, only shoot players with a different color than yourself. Look at your gun and/or your HUD to see your color if you are unsure what team you're on. When hitting a team mate, you'll also get a different hit sound that indicates you're doing something wrong. In team based game modes, you can use team chat for communicating with your team only, and also use predefined binds for team relevant commands such as "Enemy seen" or "Free item" that spawn sprites visible to your team mates in order to let your team mates know of situations of strategic value. Of course, you can set up your own team communication binds, including sprites, using the input tab of the menu.

Team Deathmatch (tdm) is, as the name suggests, a deathmatch played in teams. The team with the most frags wins, simple as that.

Capture The Flag (ctf) is a popular team match in which you have two teams, two bases, and two flags. You have to get into the enemy base, grab their flag, and bring it back to your own flag to score. Only capturing the flag gives points that are relevant for determining the winning team. Normal fragging, flag carrier fragging, flag returning and flag capturing are used for ranking the players within a team. The team with the most points wins.

Assault (as) is a team based game mode where you have one attacking team and one defending team. There are objectives in the map that the attacking team needs to complete, whereas the defending team tries to keep the attackers from completing any objective. Objectives are usually connected in a way that completing one (set of) objectives unlocks the next (set of) objectives up to the final object. One round ends if the last objective is completed or the timelimit is hit. After the round the teams swap the attackers/defender roles. The team wins that completes the final objective fastest.

In Clan Arena (ca) two teams fight each other in rounds. Players spawn at the beginning of each round with almost all weapons, 200 health and 200 armor, and will, if fragged, not respawn until the beginning of the next round. Health and Armor do not regenerate or degenerate, there are no items to pickup on the map. In this game mode you will not recieve damage from weapons fired by yourself, enabling you to constantly use rocket jumping and rocket flying to your advantage. You will also not deal/receive damage to/from your team mates. A team scores a point when all members of one team have been fragged, and the next round begins. The team that reaches the score limit first wins.

Domination (dom) is another team based game mode. Throughout the map are domination points. Touch them and your team will own that point. You get points for each second you own such a domination point. Touch points the other team holds to turn it into your own. The team with the most points wins.

Freezetag (freezetag) is a team based game mode, where the players don't get fragged but frozen. Non-frozen team mates can unfreeze a frozen team mate by staying really close for a certain time unless they get frozen themselves in the process. A team scores a point when it manages to freeze all players of the other team.

In Keyhunt (kh) each team has one key and the goal is the collect all keys. The team with the most points wins. You get small points for fragging, fragging a keycarrier and picking up a key but you should go for the BIG points you get when one team has all the keys and all the keycarriers meet. Of course it also works when ONE player gets all the keys for his team but this is much harder.

Sick and tired of those hyper realistic soccer simulators? Then have a look at Nexball (nexball), where two teams try to get a ball into the opposing team's goal. Obviously your team can only score a point by managing to get the ball into the other goal, whereas the means of doing so vary greatly from map to map. Some require you to push it with your player (football type), other maps allow you to pick up the ball and to shoot it with the Ball Gun (basketball type). Some maps even allow you to pick up additional weapons to annoy your opposing team with.

On the mode Onslaught (ons) each team has a power generator and the goal is to destroy the enemies generator. Each generator and all except one checkpoint in the map are protected by an forcefield which is powered by nearby checkpoint. Your team has to start at the one unprotected checkpoint and work your way up to the enemies generator. Find the perfect balance between attacking the enemies checkpoints/generator and protecting your own.

Mutators

Minstagib is an improved instagib. You can pick up lives, so you can survive two shots, and you can pick up an item to become almost invisible. This is were the MinstaNex got its name from. If you run out of ammo, you will have 10 seconds to find some or you will die.

The Hook mutator will add an off-hand hook which can be used like the grappling hook but can be used while you carry other guns. Fire the hook at a ceiling or wall using the key configured through the menu or bound using bind "key" "+hook". Hold down this key while the hook is attached to be pulled toward it.

Laser-guided rockets will give you a Laser dot on the rocket launcher which you can use to guide the most recently fired rocket.

Vampire will add whatever damage you do to your opponent to your own health.

Nixnex will remove normal guns from the map and give all players the same gun. That gun is changed after a while.

Footsteps will add footstep sounds to your movements.

Weapon Arena equips everyone with the arena gun chosen by the server admin.

There are some more of these mutators, but those are the most important ones.

Getting in Touch with the Xonotic Community

If you are looking for all the community buzz visit the official Xonotic forum: http://forums.xonotic.org/ (ok reading this you probably found that forum already ). Also check out the blog for "official" articles around the project: http://www.xonotic.org/team/blog/. You can also find lots of community members discussing Xonotic related stuff and other stuff on IRC at irc.quakenet.org on channel #xonotic.

Probably add a version number to this.
Things like Weapons could thrown off the game. Merged with one another or get other Firemodes attached.
Also - other Mods are likely to be added etc. pp. blah. and. blupp.

Quote:The secondary fire mode loads up to four missiles into the gun as long as you keep secondary fire button pressed, and fires them all at once with high spread upon release or when you press primary fire button.

BTW by that:

Quote:You can unload hagar's preloaded rockets in secondary mode by pressing primary fire while still holding down secondary.

I meant to say rockets are NOT fired. You press primary, if time to involuntary shoot rockets is coming or you get tired of holding alternate fire down. After that, you can load them again.

Maybe this text could be used to make a video series, like GreEn`mArine's 'Nexuiz in Depth' series. Personally those videos were really useful back when I first discovered Nexuiz, especially the one about the console.

Just to be clear: Overkill is NOT a official mode/mutator, and there's no Vehicle CTF mode (just vehicles and ctf). Tbh i did not read the OP WOT, so i may be missing the point of this thread, just tough it clarify those points before you spend time on it.

If you sill want to write abt overkill, find me in #mon.xonotic @ quakenet and ask what you need to know.

(01-19-2012, 06:07 AM)Halogene Wrote: The most simple way to do this is to run forward and simply keep the jump button pressed. Your character will jump again the moment he lands, without you having to worry about timing hitting the jump key. Just try it out and you will notice you get faster and faster. Unlike other games, Xonotic does not need you to do this with strange key combinations or even with circular movements of the mouse - trying to do these will generally make you slower.

I don't think this is completely true; with 0.5 physics I'm pretty sure you can still gain speed strafejumping rather than just holding jump and forward. Or did it just mean that if you don't know how to strafejump, trying it may not work?

Hmm you might be right, gotta verify that movement aspect. Of course 0.5/0.6 movement differs from XPM a lot, but I'll check the effectiveness of strafe jumping.

@tZork: I'm not particularly fond of the overkill mutator myself, but a lot of people seem to like it (your server has almost always people on it when I check). That should qualify for the code to make it into official Xonotic imho, provided of course it's stable enough.

Actually the greatest advantage for me in the new physics is that I can use my XPM routine in normal physcis without punishment. It's a great plus that you can use both methods and still be about as fast with both.